It's not often we get to interview people who have bought an entire femtocell company. This article is based on the personal views of Charles Kuai, formerly CSO & President of Mobile Broadband for Ubee-Interactive, which acquired a leading 3G CDMA femtocell company Airwalk last year. He outlines some of the key challenges that mobile operators face today, identifies regional and cultural differences and discusses some of the implications for the future.

These are his personal opinions and don't necessarily reflect the official views of any company.

Celcite is one of at most half a dozen companies that specialise in SON (Self-Organising Networks) today – software systems that are the "auto-pilot" for mobile networks, configuring and setting parameters across multiple-vendor small and macrocell equipment to maximise system performance and efficiency.

We spoke with Chris Larmour, CMO at Celcite, to understand his perspective of the market status of SON technology generally – what do CTOs think of it, where is it deployed today and how is it evolving. We heard about the difference (and potential conflict) between Distributed (D-SON) vs Centralised SON (C-SON), discuss which functionality belongs in the small cell versus central servers and learnt about the reducing "trust gap" which needs to be crossed prior to mass deployment.

SK Telecom is the largest network operator in South Korea and continues to retain a leading market share despite strong competition through constant innovation and investment. We asked Kim Chang-young, Senior Manager of Access Network Lab, to outline his views how they have used LTE technology and small cells to achieve this.

He foresees that LTE will be preferred by users over Wi-Fi, explains several techniques which helped speed deployment and optimise performance, and positions VoLTE as essential to deliver the best voice quality.

It's helpful to talk to a variety of industry players when seeking different views and opinions about the practical issues and progress of small cell deployment. To gain perspective on how the industry is progressing, we spoke with Clint Heiden, CCO (pictured left), and Doug Wiest, EVP Wireless of EdgeConneX, a US-based company specialising in speeding the delivery of mobile and wireline content. Both Doug and Clint have extensive experience in the US cellular and fibre industries, with Doug having been COO of American Tower and CEO of Lightower and Clint having been President of Sidera and PAETEC. Their backgrounds uniquely position them to comment on the disruptive changes affecting the industry.

Gordon Mansfield is responsible for Small Cells at AT&T and has also been Chairman of the Small Cell Forum since last September. We asked him if there really is a mobile data traffic problem or not, and how urgently small cells are needed to address the problem. He also shared his views on LTE adoption, new features such as VoLTE, and some of the LTE-Advanced features which can't easily be supported by small cells.

These insights are very timely in the run-up to next week's LTE World Summit.

Gordon Mansfield, AVP – Small Cell Solutions at AT&T, has been Chairman of the Small Cell Forum since last September, and we caught up with him before Small Cell World Summit to hear how the Forum has evolved under his new leadership. He explained their Release Program, reveals where the strongest areas of interest are, discusses some terminology confusion and explains how the membership has evolved.

This shows a considerable move of focus from earlier residential femtocells (which aren't going away) onto both Enterprise and so-called Public Access small cells (Metrocells and Picocells).

Nokia-Siemens Networks has consolidated all their small cell solutions into a single product group. Randy Cox, who heads up their Small Cell product management, highlights what's holding back the small cell market today, identifies changing requirements for small cells and explains his view of where public Wi-Fi fits into the picture.

Cisco has just announced their intention to buy Ubiquisys for $310M. We spoke with Jared Headley, Director of Service Provider Mobility at Cisco, to establish why they made the purchase, what will happen to Ubiquisys staff, and how Cisco will take this forward.

He revealed some of the unique capabilities they valued most within Ubiquisys, explains their go-to-market plans and highlights that it isn't just about coverage or capacity.

Huawei is the top supplier of RAN infrastructure worldwide, so it's no surprise they should be in the small cell market. I asked Liu Ju, Director of Huawei Small Cell Product Line, to expand on how he sees the Small Cell marketplace evolving, and what the key technical challenges are. He identifies three critical features for small cells, believes demand will be initially stronger for 3G small cells and explains how WiFi could become integrated into the solution.

Stephane Daeuble of Nokia Siemens Networks believes small cells will start to be widely adopted for capacity within 2-3 years. His view is that the superior technology of LTE will win out long term, but that 3G/Wi-Fi would be deployed initially over the next two years.

He reveals some insights from their live LTE small cell trial network, including the level of in-building coverage from street based metrocells, surprising sources of interference and drawbacks of the standard 3G and LTE network architecture.